


The Boy Next Door

by TheColorBlue



Category: Toy Story 3 (2010)
Genre: Andy's head is perpetually in kingdom cuckoo-land, M/M, Sid's grown up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-14
Updated: 2011-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-24 14:30:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not sure what to do. He tries smiling. It feels strange on his face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy Next Door

**Author's Note:**

> Cleaning through old writing; I had forgotten that I had even written this ^_^

Sid likes destroying things. He likes destroying things and remaking them, and watching wood burn, and glass break, and plastic melt. It's just the way he is, even after what his old therapist calls his childhood emotional breakdown, and toy stores do terrible things to his nerves, and Hannah still threatens to pull out the dolls whenever he's really pissed her off.

Maybe it makes sense that his dad had gotten him that part-time job working with the waste disposal company that his dad also works with. It's his first summer before his freshman year at community college. The smell is still something to get used to, but he puts on his headphones, and jams to the playlists running on his ipod. He rat-tat-tat's drumming on trashcan lids before tossing trash bags into the back of the garbage truck. He watches milk cartoons and egg shells and a moldy mattress compact tighter and tighter, springs squealing and cotton bursting from the seams. He flattens a runaway aluminum can under the heel of his boot. His therapist had told him that he'd had destructive issues. He likes the sound of glass breaking. It soothes his nerves. He's started a project lately where he's melting bits of broken beer bottles onto this old bird cage someone had thrown out. He's not sure where's he's going with this, but he likes the hiss and heat of the blowtorch over the workbench in the garage. He doesn't use anything from items that resemble anything alive anymore. No animals, insects, dolls. No toys. It's all abstract. Moms says it looks like a heap of garbage he's collecting these days, but it's keeping him out of trouble at least. He could be doing worse with himself.

The handles of the trashcan are hot through the material of his gloves. The sun beats down. His mom thinks he's crazy for going out in black clothes and long sleeves and his striped scarf. Led Zeppelin is playing through his earphones. Andy Davis is cleaning out his garage one house down. Sid dumps the contents of the trashcan into the back of the truck, drops the trashcan back down on the curb. It makes a heavy, clanging noise against the concrete.

Andy used to be his next-door neighbor. He'd watch Andy's hordes of friends come over on weekends to play with their sets of Buzz Lightyear toys, or to get together to baseball practice, or to swim in the local pool on hot summer days. Sid would be practicing with his skateboard on the street. Or he could hear them over the fence as he was lining G.I.Joes up for war-time reenactment, complete with real explosions. Andy, in Sid's estimation, had been absolutely abnormal. Even with the clean-cut, wholesome American look going on for the other kid. The ridiculous, stupid stories that guy would make up as he played with his toys. The way he _treated_ those things. It was like the guy had his head up in kingdom cuckoo-land or something--

Or maybe Andy had had something really going on for him, because here's Sid manning the garbage truck, traumatized for life by childhood hallucinations--and there is Andy, older and taller and trim, his shoulders filling out the lines of his t-shirt in ways that Sid doesn't want to think too hard about it. He's heard his mom talking over the phone, their old neighbors coming up in conversation. Andy is going to UCLA, focusing on art or computer graphics or something geeky like that. God, he hates the guy.

Sid tries to make his work quick, going down Elm Street. Normally, Andy's not around the front of the house when Sid makes his rounds, so--fine, whatever, he's just going to grab the garbage and run and--oh shit, here he comes, probably forgot to take out some of his trash, oh shit oh shit--

"Hey, hey, could you take this too--" Andy's saying, hauling a garbage sack over and then he's finally peering up at Sid through the fringe of his hair and the glare of the sun and--" _Sid?_ " he asks, surprised. "Sid Philips?"

"Hey," Sid grunts. Led Zeppelin is pounding in his ears. He turns his ipod off, fumbling a little. His hands feel strangely sweaty. "Andy Davis, right? My old neighbor?" He grabs the trash bag from Andy's hands. "How's it going?"

Andy hesitates. Then he says, "Everything's been good here. You?"

"Great. 'm doing just great," Sid says. He's not sure what to do. He tries smiling. It feels strange on his face. Probably crooked-looking or something. Or psychotic. Those braces as a kid hadn't done a damn for his smile, had they.

But Andy kind of smiles back. It's a friendly expression. Andy's never been nothing if not a friendly guy. And then he's saying, "Well, good seeing you again--" and Sid's replied, "Same here--" before Andy's heading back to the garage, and Sid finds himself thinking, God, that guy's sooo out of my league---before finishing that train of thought with a fuck, fuck, _fuck_ and a mental kick to his own brains--and he's going, he's gone, he's so out of here--

Except that he has to come back the next week for garbage pick-up. Summer's only half over.

 _Fuck_.


End file.
